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Copyright, 1889, by J. B. LlPPiNCOTT Company, 




FRANKLIN. 



Franklin, Benjamin, the youngest son and fifteenth 
child of a family of seventeen children, was born in 
Boston, in the state of Massachusetts, on the 17th of 
January 1706. Equipped only with such education 
as he could pick up in scant two years at a primary 
school, he was apprenticed at twelve to his brother 
James to learn the trade of a printer, at which he 
soon became notably expert. He had been there 
about three years when his brother established a 
newspaper called the Neiv England Conrant, which 
Benjamin, after assisting in the printing, was required 
to deliver to the subscribers. He so effectively re- 
paired the deficiencies of his early education during 
the three or four years of his apprenticeship that he 
ventured to try his hand as a contributor to the col- 
umns of the newspaper, and with such success that, 
when his brother was arrested and imprisoned for a 
month by the Speaker of the Assembly for a too 
liberal exercise of his critical faculties, the manage- 
ment of the paper was confided to Benjamin. The 
younger brother presumed perhaps too much upon 



4 FRANKLIN. 

his success ; and for this and other reasons, the re- 
lations of the two gradually ceased to be harmonious, 
and despairing of finding satisfactory employment 
elsewhere in Boston, Franklin sold some of his books 
for a little money, with the determination to try his 
fortune elsewhere. He finally drifted to Philadelphia, 
where he landed on the Market Street wharf one 
Sunday morning, a friendless lad of seventeen, with 
one dollar and one shilling only in his pocket. He 
was fortunate enough to find employment imme- 
diately with a printer who had very little knowledge 
of his business, and to whom therefore Franklin's 
expertness and ingenuity were not long in proving 
almost indispensable. Not many months elapsed be- 
fore an accident secured him the acquaintance of Sir 
William Keith, the governor of the colony, who per- 
suaded him to go over to England for the requisite 
material to establish himself in the printing business 
in Philadelphia, by the promise to advance what 
money he would need for this purpose, and also to 
secure to him the printing for the government. 
Franklin arrived in London on the 1 2th December 
1724. Instead of the letters of credit he was author- 
ised to expect were awaiting him there he discovered 
to his consternation that no one who knew Keith 
placed the smallest dependence upon his word, and 
a gentleman whose acquaintance he had made on 
the passage laughed at the idea of the governor 
giving a letter of credit, who, as he said, had no 
credit to give. Franklin soon sought and found 
employment in a London printing-house, where he 
remained for the next eighteen months. He then 



FRANKLIN. 



5 



returned to Philadelphia, where, in connection with 
a fellow-printer whose father advanced some capital, 
he established a printing-house for himself His skill 
as a printer, his industry, his good sense and personal 
popularity ensured him prompt and signal success. 
In September 1729 he bought for a trifle the Pennsyl- 
vania Gazette, a newspaper then only three months 
old, and in its columns proceeded to lay the founda- 
tions of a reputation as a journalist to which he owes 
no inconsiderable portion of his distinction among 
men. 

In the following year Franklin married his old 
love, Deborah Read, now a widow, a young woman 
of his own station in life, by whom he had two chil- 
dren, a son who died in his youth, and a daughter, 
Sally, who afterwards became Mrs Bache, a name 
since honourably associated with the history of 
American science. In 1732 he commenced the pub- 
lication of what is still known to literature as Poor 
Richard's Almanac, which attained a circulation then 
unprecedented in the colonies. His contributions to 
it have been republished in many languages. In 
1736 Franklin was appointed clerk of the Assembly, 
in 1737 postmaster of Philadelphia; and shortly after 
he was elected a member of the Assembly, to which 
body he was re-elected almost uninterruptedly until 
his first mission to England, previous to which he 
was promoted to the office of deputy postmaster- 
general for the colonies. 

In 1746 he commenced those fruitful researches in 
electricity which gave him a position among the most 
illustrious natural philosophers. He exhibited in a 



6 FRANKLIN. 

more distinct form than heretofore the theory of posi- 
tive and negative electricity ; by his famous experi- 
ment with a boy's kite he proved that lightning and 
electricity are identical ; and he it was who suggested 
the protecting of buildings by lightning-conductors. 
His electrical discoveries secured to him at the com- 
paratively early age of forty-seven an election to the 
Royal Society of London. Outside of his contribu- 
tions to electrical science Franklin was the author of 
many other discoveries of only less importance ; 
among them three are deserving of special mention. 
They are: (i) The course of storms over the North 
American continent — a discovery which marked an 
epoch in the science of meteorology, and which has 
since been utilised by the aid of land and ocean 
telegraphy. (2) The course and most important char- 
acteristics of the Gulf Stream, its high temperature, 
and the consequent uses of the thermometer in navi- 
gation. (3) The diverse powers of different colours 
to absorb solar heat. 

But the researches upon which Franklin's scientific 
celebrity mainly depends occupied at the most only 
seven or eight years, and then gave way to the more 
immediately pressing calls of his country in other 
spheres, where only the true proportions of his genius 
were revealed. His electrical experiments, brilliant 
as they were, were only the embellishments of his 
greater career as a statesman and diplomatist. In 
1757 he was sent to England to insist upon the right 
of the province to tax the proprietors of the land still 
held under the Penn charter for their share of the 
cost of defending it from hostile Frenchmen and 



FRANKLIN. y 

Indians. His mission was crowned with success. 
He was absent on this work five years, during which 
he received honorary degrees from Oxford and Edin- 
burgh, In 1764 he was again sent to England to 
contest the pretensions of parhament to tax the 
American colonies without representation. The dif- 
ferences, however, between the mother-government 
and the colonies in regard to the prerogatives of the 
crown and the powers of parliament at last became 
too grave to be reconciled by negotiation. The 
officers sent by the home government to New En- 
gland were resisted in the discharge of their duty, 
and in 1775 patriotism as well as regard for his per- 
sonal safety decided Franklin to return to the United 
States, where he at once participated actively in the 
measures and deliberations of the colonists, which 
resulted in the declaration of their independence on 
the 4th July 1776, and in constituting what has since 
been known as the Republic of the United States. 

To secure foreign assistance in prosecuting the 
war in which the colonies were already engaged with 
Great Britain, Franklin, now in the seventy-first year 
of his age, was sent to Paris. He reached the 
French capital in the winter of 1776-77, where his 
fame as a philosopher as well as a statesman had 
already preceded him. His great skill as a negotiator 
and immense personal popularity, reinforced by the 
then hereditary antipathy of the French and English 
people for each other, conspired to favour the pur- 
pose of Franklin's mission. A treaty of alliance 
with the United States was signed by the French 
king on the 6th of February 1778, while opportune 



8 FRANKLIN. 

and substantial aids in arms and munitions of war 
as well as money were supplied from the royal ar- 
senals and treasury. On the 3d of September 1783 
his mission was crowned with success through 
England's recognition of the independence of the 
United States. Franklin continued to discharge the 
duties of minister-plenipotentiary in Paris until 1785, 
when, in consequence of his advanced age and in- 
creasing infirmities, he was relieved at his own re- 
quest. He reached Philadelphia on the 14th of 
September 1785, when he was elected almost im- 
mediately president of the state of Pennsylvania, with 
but one dissenting vote besides his own. To this 
office he was twice re-elected unanimously. During 
the period of his service as president he was also 
chosen a delegate to the convention which framed 
the constitution of the United States. With the ex- 
piration of his third term as president in 1788 Frank- 
lin retired from public life, after an almost continuous 
service of more than forty years, with a fortune 
neither too large nor too small for his fame or his 
comfort. Franklin was the founder and first president 
of the Philosophical Society of Pennsylvania, and 
an honorary member of all leading scientific societies 
of the Old World. 

He died on the 17th April 1790, in the eighty- 
fourth year of his age, and was buried in the grave- 
yard of Christ Church, Philadelphia. His writings 
continue to this day to be republished in almost 
every written tongue, and yet curiously enough he 
wrote nothing for the press after the termination of 
his editorial career except a half-dozen or more com- 



FRANKLIN. g 

paratively brief contributions to the journals of the 
day, for the rectification of pubhc opinion in Europe 
on American affairs. 

His complete writings, which have been edited by 
John Bigelow (lo vols. New York, 1S86-S2), consist 
almost exclusively of letters addressed to private 
individuals, very few of which were given to the press 
in his lifetime. Even his scientific discoveries were 
communicated to the world in letters to personal 
friends. The very interesting autobiography was 
specially edited by Bigelow (1868). In the Life of 
Frayiklin by Bigelow (published by Lippincott, Phila- 
delphia), the author says he had ' tried to condense 
everything Franklin left behind him that any one not 
pursuing special investigations now cares to read of 
the most eminent journalist, philosopher, diplomatist, 
and statesman of his time.' 



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